'Co-working with Things': Exhibition Preview

Wed 14 November, 4:00pm - 6:00pm

Opening times: 4-6pm

Venue: Martin Hall Exhibition Space

Join us for the opening of Assunta Ruocco's 'Co-Working with Things' in the Martin Hall Exhibition Space on Wednesday 14th November, from 4-6pm. Wine and refreshments provided, and the artist and curator will be present to discuss the work.

An exhibition of artistic research conducted as part of the practice-based PhD project ‘Co-working with Things. How Furnished Spaces Contribute to the Emergence of Artworks’, supervised by Gillian Whiteley and­­­­ Eleanor Morgan, within Loughborough University School of the Arts, English and Drama. All prints were produced within SAED Printmaking Workshop with the help and advice of printmaking tutor Pete Dobson. Exhibition curated by David Bell, with support from Radar­.

Background:

In 1947, artist Anni Albers urged us to consider ‘materials as our co-workers’. In so doing she invited us to develop new relationships with machines, tools, materials and working spaces. This exhibition explores how the things with which artists work can be seen as co-workers. All the artworks presented are based on simple sets of rules derived from what was possible within a particular, contingent context: working at home or in the printmaking workshop. The works are ongoing, and insist on labour intensive relationships with materials, tools and machines arranged within particular furnished spaces.

The most important aspect common to the works is that they are not autonomous pieces produced by an autonomous artist: their dependence on situations, contexts, equipment, and the willingness of others to do some of the work is written within the ‘code’ that structures their ongoing development. The modular installation Vertical Studio is formless, until someone helps to make it by arranging the elements. Aquatint Etchings is a series of double-sided, multi-layered prints: exhibiting them always involves outsourcing the process of deciding which print is visible, and which is concealed. To make the Photo-Etchings, I asked friends to select from thousands of drawings. Those chosen were then turned into a multiple through the complex photo-etching process which produces uncontrollable variations.

The myth of artistic autonomy is challenged by artworks that depend on contingent contexts and can only emerge from specific arrangements of things. Focusing on the role of things within furnished spaces also reveals the importance of maintenance activities that are not usually seen as part of artistic labour. It is the work of setting up and looking after spaces such as homes, studios and workshops that makes the emergence of new artworks possible.